Various types of construction workers including painters, electricians, carpenters, general contractors, as well as other laborers including farmers and mechanics use a pickup truck. The utility of the truck is that the bed of the truck provides storage and transportation of unusually sized items that would not fit within an enclosed structure like a car or a van. Some types of specialized racks are designed for trucks to carry long items such as ladders, pipes, siding, and reenforcing bars. Typically, these truck accessories take the form of a stationary frame attached to the side rails of the bed of a truck or trailer. Some of these are attached solely to the side rails of a pickup truck bed with appropriate attachments for such items as ladders or the like. Under other circumstances there may be cross members that run laterally above the bed of the pickup truck approximately the height of the side rails, connecting one side rail rack to another side rail rack. Lateral members make the possibility of carrying longer items above the bed of the pickup truck by resting them on the lateral members. Whatever may be carried in these racks may be secured using ropes, elastic cords, chains, or other usual attaching devices. In most circumstances, items that are carried in this fashion, whether they are ladders, plastic pipe, or lumber, are lifted into place by a user and placed on the rack for transport, then when the user has arrived at the point necessary to use the stored item, they are then lifted out of the rack to where they are needed to be used.
While these racks have significant utility, they also have significant shortcomings. First, depending on how the rack is constructed, there is a limit as to the length of items that can be stored on a rack since most states have laws that limit the amount an item may extend behind a vehicle because of the danger created by a pipe or pole extending beyond the lift gate of a pickup truck. This is especially true where the rack is at the level of the pickup truck side walls since an extending item would basically protrude into the windshield or passenger area of a passenger car coming behind the truck carrying such an item. Secondly, these racks have limited utility for heavy items since a heavy item may require more than one person to remove the item from the rack on which it is stored.
There are expedients that have been employed to overcome some of these shortcomings. For example, Mistler, U.S. Pat. No. 6,676,220, discloses a pivoting rack attachment to the side rails and bed of a pickup truck. Mistler employs a specially designed pivoting frame employing four sections. At the part of the Mistler rack closest to the tailgate of the truck, there are a pair of rear pivoting legs to pivot from a vertical position to a horizontal position as the dump rack itself goes from a neutral or horizontal position to an inclined vertical position. Mistier has a two-pivot point dump rack disclosed in U.S. Publication #2007/0258800, which again employs a hydraulic lift on the bed of the truck using two pivots points to pivot a dump rack. Steiger, U.S. Pat. No. 5,868,453, discloses a truck bed security system and also pivots to dump a load carried on the platform (23). The platform (23) of the Steiger '453 patent completely covers the bed of the truck and when the rack is in the horizontal position, this secures the dump bed or bed of the pickup truck. Steiger, like Mistler, employs a rotatable hydraulic arm on the bed of the truck to raise and lower the rack. Despite this earlier work there is still a need for a simple and practical dump rack that can be built at a reasonable price, is not unduly complex to build or to operate, which does not obstruct the bed of the pickup truck from use concurrently with or in addition to the dump rack, and can be employed to carry oversized loads.
The current invention employs a single pivot axis for a dump rack mounted on the side rails of a pickup truck. This pivot axis is in close proximity to the end of the side rail distal from the cab of the truck and proximal to the tailgate. At a predetermined distance from the pivot axis, two single arm hydraulic lift mechanisms are employed. One end of each hydraulic lift mechanism is mounted at the approximate level of the upper portion of the side rail of the pickup truck. The opposite end of each hydraulic lift mechanism is mounted on the under side of the upper rail of the dump rack. The dump rack itself is positioned on a support mounted on the side rail of the pickup truck. The dump rack of this invention extends all the way to and above the cab of the pickup truck. It provides that extremely long items may be mounted to extend in front of the front bumper of the pickup truck and may also extend beyond the rear bumper of the pickup truck, providing the capability of carrying items substantially in excess of 35 feet, while still staying within the limitations on overhanging items imposed by most highway safety rules. In order to effectively lift the dump rack to an angle so that it will be able to dump long items, it is necessary that the hydraulic lift be mounted at or near the height of the side rail unless a complex and expensive telescoping hydraulic lift is employed. A generally rectangular bed-like container may be removably fixed or permanently fixed within the rack, so that loose items, debris, soil, construction refuse and the like can be carried and dumped using the hydraulic lifts. Some construction sites require relatively timber large crossbeams. These timber beams can range to up to 35 feet in length. These will not fit within an ordinary bed of a dump truck. Consequently, a much larger truck must be employed to move them from the lumber yard or other point of purchase to the point of construction. These large trucks may create problems on small residential streets or in driveways. Consequently, if a regular pickup truck could be employed to carry and unload these long, heavy timber beams it would be a substantial advance in the art. This and other advantages of this invention will be more apparent from the Detailed Description of the Drawings which follows.